In this new title in Verso’s Pocket Communism series, Jodi Dean unshackles the communist ideal from the failures of theSoviet Union. In an age when the malfeasance of internationalbanking has alerted exploited populations the world over to theunsustainability of an economic system predicated on perpetualgrowth, it is time the left ended its melancholic accommodationwith capitalism.
In the new capitalism of networked information technologies, ourvery ability to communicate is exploited, but revolution is stillpossible if we organize on the basis of our common and collectivedesires. Examining the experience of the Occupy movement, Deanargues that such spontaneity can’t develop into a revolution andit needs to constitute itself as a party.
An innovative work of pressing relevance, The Communist Horizonoffers nothing less than a manifesto for a new collective politics.
“This is what everyone engaged in today’s struggles for emancipation needs: a unique combination of theoretical stringency and a realistic assessment of our predicament. To anyone who continues to dwell in illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: read Jodi Dean’s new book!”—Slavoj Žižek
“Jodi’s sharp analysis of the impasses of the left is also a kind of requiem for much of the 2.0 bluster of the last decade.”—Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism
Jodi Dean teaches political and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited eleven books, including The Communist Horizon and Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies.
In this new title in Verso’s Pocket Communism series, Jodi Dean unshackles the communist ideal from the failures of theSoviet Union. In an age when the malfeasance of internationalbanking has alerted exploited populations the world over to theunsustainability of an economic system predicated on perpetualgrowth, it is time the left ended its melancholic accommodationwith capitalism.
In the new capitalism of networked information technologies, ourvery ability to communicate is exploited, but revolution is stillpossible if we organize on the basis of our common and collectivedesires. Examining the experience of the Occupy movement, Deanargues that such spontaneity can’t develop into a revolution andit needs to constitute itself as a party.
An innovative work of pressing relevance, The Communist Horizonoffers nothing less than a manifesto for a new collective politics.
Reviews
“This is what everyone engaged in today’s struggles for emancipation needs: a unique combination of theoretical stringency and a realistic assessment of our predicament. To anyone who continues to dwell in illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: read Jodi Dean’s new book!”—Slavoj Žižek
“Jodi’s sharp analysis of the impasses of the left is also a kind of requiem for much of the 2.0 bluster of the last decade.”—Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism
Author
Jodi Dean teaches political and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited eleven books, including The Communist Horizon and Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies.
